3 ways digital currencies could change global trade

Digital currencies are growing: the market is valued at more than $2 trillion and involves more than 15,000 varieties. In 2021, El Salvador even adopted Bitcoin as its legal currency.

While private digital currencies are blooming, central banks are catching up. In October 2021, Nigeria joined the Bahamas, the Eastern Caribbean States and Cambodia as one of the first jurisdictions to officially launch central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). Based on the Atlantic Council’s CBDC tracker, 14 countries have launched CBDC pilots while 16 countries are developing CBDCs and 41 are conducting research.

From precious metals to paper money, currencies are crucial for global trade and commerce. As society enters the digital age and more forms of digital currency compete for virality, what does it mean for international trade?

There are three potential ways digital currencies could change international trade:

The speed of settlement for cross-border payments varies from the same business day to five business days. Human interaction is often required in the process of verifying the sender and recipient's information, for example for anti-money laundering and combatting terrorism financing (AML and CTF) purposes. As a result, the speed of payment is often determined by how much the business hours of the sending institution and the receiving institution overlap; and whether the sending and receiving institutions rely on the same messaging standards.

For digital currencies that rely on decentralized ledgers, money could be sent and received within seconds and around the clock. Future regulatory compliance requirements on digital currency service providers and foreign exchange controls may have an impact on the speed.

There’s a $1.7 trillion global trade financing gap, which heavily impacts SMEs who typically don’t have established financial records with banks. Public ledgers of digital currencies could be used to share payment and financial history to underwrite loans for import and export. At the same time, strong privacy protocols would need to be enforced in order to achieve this.

De-risking creates obstacles for countries perceived with high AML and CTF risks who want to participate in global trade and can increase the transaction costs for buyers and sellers in those countries, such as in Latin America and the Pacific Islands. Digital currencies have the potential to reduce the overall costs of AML and CTF compliance due to their digital set up. Digital currencies could provide alternative payment channels to allow consumers and merchants from those countries to be reconnected with international buyers and sellers, while still in compliance with AML and CTF requirements.

Despite their promising potential, digital currencies may not, however, solve some existing problems facing international trade and could raise new issues including:

The international trade community needs to be prepared and capture the opportunities of this new age by closing the digital divide. As we head towards a new age where money and trade in goods and services are more and more digitized, it is crucial to ensure no one is left behind. Investments are needed to provide the right infrastructure for the future, to ensure accessible and affordable connectivity for all.

It is also important for policy-makers to work closely with the technical service providers behind digital currencies to fully understand the potential benefits and risks. Laws and regulations can then provide sufficient protection without stifling innovation. The digital currency governance consortium has provided a great example of public-private partnerships with more than 85 public and private organizations working together to address issues related to digital currencies.

Furthermore, the advancement of payments technology needs to be accompanied by the digitization of trade. A chain is as strong as its weakest link and with heavy reliance on paper documents and a lack of legal support for e-documents or e-signature, the benefits of digital currencies will be limited. Trade policy-makers need to focus on building the right physical and legal infrastructures to create trade for tomorrow.

To achieve the full potential of digital currencies, it will be crucial for countries to sign new types of trade agreements to enable market access for private issuers of digital currencies, to allow payments to operate in conjunction with each other, and to allow data to flow freely and with trust. Singapore, Australia, the UK, Chile and New Zealand have championed such forward-looking trade agreements.

While traditional financial institutions have started to offer settlement through digital currencies and some retailers have started to accept digital currencies, adoption on a large scale is still a long way off, particularly in the cross-border setting. There are yet many technical and regulatory challenges to overcome, ranging from issues of interoperability to the issues of AML, CTF and consumer protection. There’s no doubt, however, that we are entering the age of digital currency and more work needs to be done to allow participants of international trade to reap the benefits.